단테의 인유로 보는 엘리엇 작품 속의 종교적 여정: 『신곡』을 위주로 한 기독교적 세계관을 중심으로

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to analyze the religious journey of T.S. Eliot, the great modernist poet compared with Dante's perspective in The Divine Comedy. This idea comes from the fact that some of Eliot's religious development is very similar to Dante's spiritual journey in The Divine Comedy. Eliot highly respected Dante for his poetical sensibilities of keeping some medieval traditions, and tried to learn from them throughout his artistic life. Above all the most important point of comparison between these two great artists is that both of them had the same perception of the world ultimately because of the similar views of Christianity and redemption. Eliot developed this idea in stages in some of his works such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," The Waste Land, Ash-Wednesday and Four Quartets. Eliot was deeply concerned about the loss of good in human nature and the accelerating human alienation in the devastated modern society during World War Ⅱ. Eliot made a lot of allusion to his works from Dante's vivid description of the Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise in The Divine Comedy to express his feeling for the confusing condition of the world. This series of works shows us his religious journey and is comparable with Dante's work, The Divine Comedy. Eliot used the horrible atmosphere of the Inferno in 'The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock' and The waste Land to mirror the European world at that time. In ‘The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, the atmosphere is full of Dante's hell, which makes Prufrock share Guido's fear. Prufrock's hell is not a real place like Dante's but is rather a state of mind which constitutes its own place. This mental hell is shown by the metaphor of Dante's Inferno using elements like the mired dead souls. Upon arrival into The Waste Land, the sufferings are far more accelerated with 'no shelter' and 'no sound of water' for the longing souls. Instead it is showing just 'a heap of broken images' and 'fear in a handful of dust'. The speaker in the poem desperately needs to escape from the mental agony but doesn't know what to do. After Eliot's religious conversion, we can see the mood of his poems such as Ash-wednesday and Four Quartets are totally changed from deep despair to high hope. We can surmise that Eliot found much spiritual comfort in his new religion in the Anglican Church. The speaker of the poem finally learned the way of redemption, and he turns to God and depends on it totally with sincere prayer to the 'Lady' who represents Beatrice in Dante's The Divine Comedy. In his late art career, through his profound philosophical meditation, Eliot concludes that because of human weakness and limited ability, redemption only comes from the humble prayer to God and full union to him. In the rose-garden in the world which represents 'The Garden of Eden', we can see Eliot's long religious journey is completed giving him spiritual comfort.